


Yet

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bedtime Stories, Crows, Fever Dreams, Folklore, Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, Haunting, Pre and Post Reichenbach, Story: The Adventure of the Empty House
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:34:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At seventeen past eight Sherlock blows through the door with a dry leaf in his hair, stripping off his gloves, the scarf, the coat, John’s gun, soft sheddings and a thud. John, on the sofa, head full, just enough of a fever to make everything seem soft and strange and not entirely unpleasant, picks up a smile through the fog.</p>
<p>John’s a bit haunted.<br/>It’s all right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Story

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [ PFG](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart), writer-with, for sparking this tale more than a year ago, [ Chapbook](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ChapBook), for the constant stream of folklore and crows and support, [Jude](http://archiveofourown.org/users/wiggleofjudas/pseuds/wiggleofjudas), poet-friend, for the through place, [Moranion,](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Moranion/pseuds/Moranion) for always wanting more (ghosts), and [Science](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ScienceofObsession/pseuds/ScienceofObsession), for the fear of putting your feet down.

_"One need not be a chamber to be haunted."--Emily Dickinson_

 

At seventeen past eight Sherlock blows through the door with a dry leaf in his hair, stripping off his gloves, the scarf, the coat, John’s gun, soft sheddings and a thud. John, on the sofa, head full, just enough of a fever to make everything soft and strange and not entirely unpleasant, picks up a smile through the fog.

“Solved it then?”

A twitch that says _obvious._

“How are you feeling?”

“Just woke up," John says, “all right. What’d the sister say?”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, lights the fire, goes to the kitchen for the kettle.

John can hear the wind outside, licking and pecking at the pane.

“Last of the honey,” Sherlock says, sets a mug down on the table.

“Blowing out,” he says, settles in the chair.

“I should,” John says, “get up.”

“You’re about twelve hours into a probable rhinovirus; stay there and you’ll take that much off the duration.”

“Yeah,” --the threat of a sneeze-- “that’s … ”

“Brilliant.”

“Right.”

John takes a sip from the mug, tastes fieldflowers and honey.

A gust batters the windows, whispers _November_ in the after.

Sherlock puts his hands to the fire and tugs his collar open.

“I’ll tell you a story then, shall I? Right sort of night for it.”

“You want to tell me a story.”

There’s something there in the near distance, an almost-sense; it must be the congestion.

“Yes, a ghost story, John, the kind you like, with a lot of local colour. With murder and hauntings and dubious truths. Much more interesting than the bit of family drama I just closed."

“A case?”

“Of sorts.”

“Tell me,” says John, settles back against the cushions.

“Inman St. George was a shepherd,” Sherlock says, “and a ghost.”

“Tell me,” says John, and he closes his eyes.

“His neighbours said he could call the dead out of the hills,” Sherlock says, “which was nonsense of course. He disappeared, or rather he was murdered. But I could never prove it.”

“Tell me,” says John.

“He fell in love with twin sisters, was thought to have been murdered by one of them. He walked into the hills and vanished, calling his crow after him.”

“His crow?”

“A pet, I suppose. Or a companion. The sisters disappeared six months later, never to be found again. As if the hills had consumed them.”

“Where did this happen?” John says, tongue thick against the soft lap of sleep and the dark hills tattooed on the insides of his eyes. “How’d you get involved?”

“Up north. Fells and gills and sheep-counting rhymes. Friend of Lestrade’s on the local police. He wanted help, was sure one of the sisters was guilty, but there was a remarkable lack of evidence of any kind. As though …”

“There was something supernatural about it.”

“Of course some of the locals thought so. But we never found Inman, never found the bones.”

“You couldn’t find a find a single trace.”

“I didn’t say that, exactly. I’ve no doubt that Inman is dead.”

“There was no hound this time,” John says. “No black shook.”

_Just a murderous twin and a crow-calling, dead-summoning shepherd._

“It wasn’t like that,” Sherlock says, “I was never …”

“Afraid,” John whispers, and his voice is hoarse. Sherlock doesn’t say anything, gets up, comes back with a glass of water and a folded blanket.

The room is warm and rich with firelight, the shadows deep in the eyes of the skull, the rain tangling with the wind against the window.

“It’s a not a case, it’s just a story,” John says. “It’s …”

“The locals persist in saying that they’ve seen Inman since, haunting the place, chatting people up, his crow on his shoulder. He could call the dead, they say; it got him into trouble.”

“It’s a story,” John says again, shivers.

“Yes, and I’m giving it to you.”

“You, you, _you_ ,” says a faint voice in John’s ear.

“Inman,” John mumbles. He’s vaguely aware that Sherlock has dropped the blanket over him, of the sounds of London weighing and settling. Branches. Wind. The crackle of the fire and a distant cry. The inky hill-shadows behind his eyes. Sherlock slipping through them, hot on the cold heels of a haunt.

  *****

When John wakes up again (or thinks he does) Inman St. George is sitting next to him on the sofa, his immaterial hip pressed to John’s, his translucent body canted, the bright eyes of the hooded crow on his shoulder alight with flame. His dark hair’s cut in a straight fringe;his mouth’s in a straight line, but somehow John knows he’s smiling. And who he is. _Jesus, I must be worse off than I thought_ , John thinks, rubs at his eyes, makes a poor attempt to sit up.

“Inman. What sort of name is that?”

“Well now marra,” Inman says, and his voice is familiar somehow, low and full of the Lakes. “Your lover over there on the chair has a name so odd no-one else has it.”

“We’re not lovers," John says. Sherlock’s asleep in the chair, leaf still trapped in his nest of hair, dark red blanket pulled up, with his knees, under his chin.

“Yet,” says Inman St. George. 

His bird hops down his arm with that pure avian delicacy made even more delicate by the dream and beaks John’s forearm--once, twice, three times. The fine feathers of his head, soft mica in the firelight, are mesmerizing.

“And what’s _his_ name?” John says, almost daring to touch.

“Yet, yet, _Yet,_ ” says the hooded crow. His toenails are practically opalescent.

Inman’s fingers are very light on John’s upper arms, only as _there_ as smoke, as fog.

“How’d you disappear?” John says. “Why couldn’t anyone find you?” Sherlock will want to know.

Inman just smiles, translucent, maddening.

“Like t'offer you a bit of advice,” he says.

“What’s that?”  

John’s aware suddenly that the sofa is warm beneath him and cool over its smooth back, that the fire is lowering, that he’s cool at the surface and warm at the core.

“Wait,” says Inman St. George.

“Wait, wait, _wait_ ,” says Yet the hooded crow.

Inman St.George leans in, his lips so close to John’s that they might as well be kissing.

“And divn't kiss the dead.”

*****

Inman's face is so close, and his breath carries the sweet scent of lake-fed earth, the wool and stone of heft and howe.  
  
There are feathers brushing John's arms.  
  
"Wake up," he hears the bird say, and then-  
  
"John?"  
  
When he blinks awake Sherlock's on the sofa next to him, leaning in a little, one hip flush to John’s, each eye with its own pool of reflected fire.  
  
 _The river burning_ , John thinks, _the burning pools of the moor._  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
"Yeah, yes, just ... I was dreaming.”

John clears his throat, looks at the fire in Sherlock’s face. “Your Inman was here. He had a … uh, his crow could talk."  
  
Sherlock's gaze shifts away, returns to John's eyes, lips, eyes.  
  
"Perhaps I shouldn't have started telling you that story when you're not entirely well."  
  
"No, it's all right. He told me …" John says, but it doesn’t seem right to finish.  
  
 _It's a ghost story, a tale about the things rational people don't believe. It can't be solved. It strips away the adult and brings back the child. It makes us afraid to put our feet down for the darkness under the bed. It gives long-missing men and their black birds a voice. It .._.  
  
Sherlock's touches two fingertips John's forehead. _(Once, twice, three times.)_  
  
"I'll fetch you some water," Sherlock says.

*****

John wakes up. Sherlock’s asleep on the floor next to sofa, dry leaf still caught in his hair.

“I ...” says John.

“Don’t be afraid to put your feet down,” Sherlock says.

*****

John wakes up. The embers are still aglow. Sherlock’s glassware-- a beaker, a flask--glimmers on the table next to sofa; his gun gleams softly next to it. 

*****

John wakes to the sound of the violin, or no, the after-echo of the violin, the whistle of a pair of wings, a crow calling.

“I’m not really awake,” says John.

“Go back to sleep then, “ Sherlock says.

*****

John wakes up. It’s really morning this time; it must be; it’s light. There are no dead men or birds anywhere to be seen. There’s a glass of water on the table next to the sofa along with his laptop and his phone, on which there’s a text that reads-

_Nothing on for today. Rest up. Gone for CuSO4 and honey. -- SH_

The flat looks a little pale;the fire’s out and the rain has ended and the light’s filtering through the windows washed-out and hung over. The streets will be wind-worried, littered with leaves and papers and debris. But his head’s clearer and he feels better, like he might get up today, go out for a walk to stretch the sprung muscles of his lower back, shake out the feathers and the ghosts.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Yet the hooded crow](http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Hooded_Crow)   
> [Hooded Crow](https://www.rspb.org.uk/wildlife/birdguide/name/h/hoodedcrow/index.aspx)   
> [Hooded Crow](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hooded_Crow)
> 
> [The yan tan tethera, sheep-counting system of the shepherds of Northern England](http://thehenrybrothers.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/counting-sheep/)  
>  marra: Cumbrian dialect, mate  
> haunt: Middle English, from Anglo-French *hanter*, probably from Old Norse *heimta* to lead home, pull, claim, from *heimr*, home


	2. The Unquiet Grave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Ah, like that with the dead,” Inman says, “canna all haunt alike.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [Songster](http://songstersmiscellany.tumblr.com/post/65838860339/songstersmiscellany-joan-baez-singing-the) for the chapter title!

_The dead are our nearest neighbors;they are all around us.—John O’Donahue_

There’s a feather on the floor. Or no, it’s a bit of dark paper on which Sherlock has drawn quills and cross-hatches in a lighter, silvery ink. He puts it in the pocket of his pyjamas, which he doesn’t remember getting into.

Dress. Still a little chilled, warm, damp as leaves.Tea, scent filling the flat. Go out. Brood on the dream, the leftover fog.

_It’s a story, John, maybe not one for the blog, but a story, a gift, a beautiful failing ..._

_Divn’t kiss the dead._

_Wait._

The streets are blown clean, something strange about them in the aftermath of a storm.

Circuitous, London blown clean. Birds startling. Somehow at home again, Sherlock cheerful with acid and crime, steering him to the sofa, handing him a book written in a language he doesn’t read and a strange brew in a mug, the color of old blood.

*****

The weather’s uncharacteristically warm.  

John’s head clears and he fires a gun and runs and frowns and laughs and chastises. Ties knots. Digs things up. There’s a crow on an iron gate in Catford, eyeing a shiny lost key, house sparrows picking biscuit crumbs at the doorstep, peppercorned in the chainlink. Fingers on keys, he thinks; since the ghosts, the angles of everything seem off.

“Sherlock,” he says.

“Yes.”

“You’d tell me, wouldn’t you.”

“About?”

“If there was something I needed to know. Something you were working on.”

No answer. Something unsettled in the near distance. Another sip of tea.

Sherlock doesn’t like to tell them, his new audience, about the unsolved ones. They’re his secrets, his fictions (No, _our_ secrets, John thinks. And we’re a kind of fiction too I suppose, but what does that mean?)

*****

Case closed. Lestrade brings them a single malt. Rich mossy burn and bones in the earth.

“Waste of time," Sherlock says, saws at the strings. Distracted.

  _Bones in the earth,_ John thinks. _We really are friends to the dead._

There’s another case. He fires another gun, not his. Sherlock says things to him that sting and he writes, _oh_ , _these stories don’t seem real in the light of day; none of them do. But danger is real. Blood is real. People die._

“Tell me,” he says to Sherlock, “what you’re up to.”

“It’s not one for the blog,” Sherlock says, settles near him.

"Well, I like it even better then.”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I do.”

They fall asleep, two laptops, stiff hips, stiff-necked with the scent of iron and stone and lake-fed earth, memories of a pool, an explosion that wasn’t.

A cloud of black feather.

*****

John’s bent over a body. Later, much later. He’s bent over a body. He’s bent over (bones trembling beneath, cold at the core,  almost as if to touch his face to the stone) brushing a leaf from the brow of a shining headstone with Sherlock’s name on it.

"Shh," says Inman St. George, with his cold hands on John's shoulders, "you'll wake him. Let him sleep awhile."

"No," says John,"no.”

“No, no, _no_ ,” says Yet the hooded crow.

*****

It doesn't happen all the time, but sometimes when he's out sleepwalking, Inman, fellow ghost, and Yet, fellow crow, will walk with him, and sometimes they'll speak.

"I'm as yours as I am his,marra," Inman says.

"What does that mean?"

"It’s true I can call the dead," Inman says, "herd ‘em out of the hills like sheep."  
  
"Will you," says John, "will you?"  
  
"If I have to," says Inman, "if it need be."

“I thought he’d be here,” John says, “but he’s just gone.”

“Ah, like that with the dead,”  Inman says, “canna all haunt alike.”

*****

Baker Street. Grief. Not so strange to see ghosts.

Inman leans in and kisses John on the brow, as though he’s a child in need of comfort.

“Divn’t kiss me back,” he says, not that John was going to.

“Why are you here?”  John says, touches his forehead gingerly.

“Well now,” says Inman, “I owe him.”

“You owe him.”

“I enjoy being unsolved,” Inman says.

“You do.”

“I do, I do, _I do_ ,” says Yet, hops down to settle on John’s pillow, a thing of strange warmth next to his open ear. He’s stolen John’s toothbrush. He’s stolen a left sock. He beaks a crowlick into John’s hair.

Inman’s smile is full of the wind and the stones and the lichen and the heather.

“A little bit in love with me, he was,” Inman says, winks, “but not ...”

“Why are you _here_?” John says again.  _When Sherlock’s gone._

“I know the names of all the beloveds,” says Inman, and vanishes.


	3. Mischief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yet steals John's wallet, his dogtags, his toast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["Black Sheep",Martin Sexton](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAc9o6nN9ZI)   
> ["North Country Boy",The Charlatans](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJo_tIGsPRk)

“Lovely crow you’ve got there, John,” Molly says, and he looks over his shoulder, catches Yet in the act of landing.

“You can see him?”

She shrugs, laughs when Yet lifts a scalpel, flaps up over the glistening thicket of lab equipment and disappears.

Somewhere Inman is laughing too.

_I know the names of all the beloveds._

Molly’s hand is tender, in its way, on John’s arm.

“Are you all right? You don’t look well.”

“Been ill. I’m all right now.”

“You miss him.”

“Yeah.”

Inman’s hands are suddenly cold on John’s shoulders.

_Let’s home, marra. Things to do._

“Not bad advice,” Molly says.

There are wings in her smile, a battlefield, the crow and the eel and the wolf and the cow.

*****

Sometimes John goes abroad in London in his pyjamas. No-one notices. Yet steals his buttons. Inman counts rats ( _yan,tyan, tethera, methera)_ laughing, catches the foxes at their tricks, tracks the bats and the wild dogs. ( _Hell to the yow and the tup_ , he says.) At the surgery they don’t look twice at John and his ghosts. There’s the sadness at home when he lights the fire, when he sees the rain, hears the wind, when things bloom and blink and drift down, cherries and plane trees and traffic lights.

London is a fell and a gill and a knott and a mere. London is a cold desert. The London only Inman sees, only Sherlock saw. London is itself, whispers to itself; if only it would speak to him in Sherlock’s voice.

“Aye,” Inman says, shrugs, “I can call the dead. Herd ‘em out right out of the hills like sheep.”

“Will you,” says John, “will you.”

“Wouldn’t be right.”

“Right, right, _right_ ,” says Yet.

“He chose to die, is that it?”

“Nae, not that; not that.”

“You know, marra,” Inman says, “they divn’t choose, not really.”

“No?”

“Nae.”

Yet steals John’s stethoscope and flies off cawing. Inman sits cooling his heels, musing on the hills he can see in the distance. _Not here. Not here._

Ah, there isn’t any tale, any case, solved or not, that can make it right, John thinks. Sherlock knew that; he knew that, the bastard. Reminded me to live; then he left.

Yet steals John's wallet, his dogtags, his toast.  
  
One day, for a long hour, the Browning disappears.  
  
"Yet!" John yells.

_You never steal Sherlock’s things._

_The holes in the wall._

_The shadows in the eyes of the skull._

_The beakers.The bow._

_You leave them for me._

“Yet!” John yells.

Puts his face in his hands.

*****

John is in bed. John is in bed, shivering.

The wind licks and pecks at the panes.

He should light the fire. He should get up.

“You know, marra,” Inman says, sits transparent and true, hip to John’s, “they’re all around us.”

“Who?”

“The dead.”

“Not as though I don’t know it.”

Yet hops pillow-ward, beaks a bullet at John’s ear.

“Tell you a tale then,” Inman says, “shall I?”

“No,” John says, “not tonight.”

“Night, night, _night_ ,” says Yet, and it sounds like apology.

The wind bangs the pane, whispers _November._

*****

“Oh, hullo,” John says, winces at his pallor in the bar-back glass.

Greg Lestrade, mouth a straight line, leans on the bar. 

“Who are you talking to?”

“You can’t see them?”

Yet hops down, beaks a line of picks on John’s jumpered arm.

He’s stolen John’s pens, his belt buckle, his passport. He sets to on John’s ear, right there in the pub.

John takes a sip, flinches at the bitter.

Oh. A flash of Sherlock’s lip, drop of whisky just there.

Sherlock’s voice.

_Waste of time._

_Inman St. George was a shepherd, and a ghost._

“Barkeep,” Inman says at his elbow, “a whisky.”

Lestrade looks at the door, palms John’s shoulder.

“You cold, mate? Cold in here.”

“Yeah,” says John, “have been for awhile.”  
  
“I'll tell you something, shall I," Inman says.

And John says what, because he will.

Lestrade takes a slow sip, looks up at the tin ceiling.  
  
"They want to live," Inman says, "the birds and the dead; they want to live and they will. Remember that."

Wind and lichen and lake-fed earth, John’s tired.

He takes another bitter sip.

“They want to live,” John says. “All right.”

“Sounds good to me,” Lestrade says.

"Live, live, _live_ ,” says Yet the hooded crow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Hooded crow in action](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpkw9iy8pus)  
> [The crow and the eel and the wolf and the red heifer,the animals of the Morrigan](http://thetaintorque.com/MorriganTranslation.html)  
>  Cumbrian dialect:  
> yow: ewe  
> tup: ram  
> knott: rocky hill  
> gill: ravine


	4. Case

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The unsolved ones are a gift.

It seems to be spring. A green blink and a chill.

“Wensleydales,” says Inman, "good breed. Hair in the eyes; good legs under ‘em.”

“Sounds like someone I used to know,” John says.

They’re walking. They’re walking in the cool green-grey of the city pasture.

Yet’s shadow covers the cold ground. There are hoofprints. Tufts of dark wool caught in the carparks, the gables, the copses. A flag of cloud. News of murder, headlines suspended.

Green-grey. Dark wool. Something shimmering in the near distance. The lost structures of London there beneath the surface, never seen before, or again.

John coughs, blinks at the new trees, buds all bursting out.

Inman counts English sparrows, whole flocks. _Yan, tan, tethera, methera_.

“You’re good at that,” John says, “the tallying.”

“Aye,” Inman says, “gatherin’ what’s lost.”

“Shall we then?”

The city holds, breathes out. Pigeons wheel to a ledge, a bridge.

Sherlock’s not there, not here, and the dead are still calling.

“Lost, lost, _lost,_ ” says Yet the hooded crow.

*****

Mycroft has visited the flat, earlier. Earl Grey and furniture wax and vanilla.

Intrigue.

“Ghosts, John? Really?” he says, “are you all right?”

“As if you don’t know.”

“My brother…”

“Might well be one of them.”

“Tha wants to go,” Inman says to Mycroft.

“Go, go, _go_ ,” says Yet, beaks the handle and lifts, flaps up with Mycroft’s brolly in tow.

“Well,” Inman says later, face alight with mirth-fire, “good at solving, we are.”

“We divn’t laugh at larceny,” John says, laughs despite himself.

“Nor love,” Inman says.

“You divn’t talk about it,” Inman says.

“Love got you into trouble,” says John, “the two sisters.”

“Aye.”

“Worth it, though.”

“Aye. Hair. Twice the eyes.”

“I know it.”

“How did you …” John starts, “what happened? Why couldn’t anyone find you?” Sherlock would want to know.

“Ah, marra,” Inman says, “he was …”

“What?” says John.

“Dinna want to be solved,” Inman says, “for mercy or for love.”

“Love, love _, love_ ,” says Yet, catches a thread in John’s scarf, pulls.

"I miss him," John says.

"Aye," Inman says, "you do."

Yet says nothing, hops three times cross the tabletop to where John's forearm rests on it, beaks the bruise that's formed there. It looks like a left ventricle.

"I miss him," John says.

“Always," Inman says, "still.'"

"Still, still, _still_ ," says Yet.

Twines round John’s thumb the thread, a little seam of blood.

Flaps off croaking, split shadowy over the mantel into several, a murder of himself.

*****

Alone, tea before bed, no sign of ghosts or feathers.

John can dream.

At seventeen past eight Sherlock bursts through the door and …

Soft sheddings and a thud, John’s gun.

It was blowing out fit to wake the, well. Wind at the windows knocking and pecking.

So many stories they wrote endings for.

_Don’t tell them about the unsolved ones._

_A gift. I’m giving it to you._

Oh, John thinks, tugs the cover up, loved you Sherlock; I did.

A fiction or a dream, no matter.

The unsolved ones are a mercy, a gift.

The unsolved ones are Sherlock's hauntings; he doesn't let them go and oh, by some miracle they don't let him go either.

It’s story not a case.

It can’t be solved.

Sleep.

*****

When John wakes up again, Inman is sitting on his chest.  
  
"Jesus Christ!"  
  
"Nae," Inman says, "obvious." His hand, transparent, earth-scented, over John's mouth like a breath.  
  
“Got a last piece of advice for you," Inman says.  
  
"Last, last, _last,_ " says Yet, stretching from his headboard perch to peer into John's face.  
  
"Fucking hell," John says, "don't startle me like that."  
  
"Startling," says Inman, "s’what we do. You know what you do. And what you divn’t do."  
  
John blinks. The room’s gone cold again.  
  
"You're not coming back after this," he says, “are you?"  
  
"Mmm," Inman says,"not unless I'm needed."  
  
"I want ..." John says, "but there's ..."   
  
"Take your time," says Inman.  
  
"Time, time, _time_ ,” says Yet, hops down onto John's arm, twitches back the cover. Beak to lips in almost, not quite, a kiss.  
  
“Would you stay?”

“Dead have curfews, marra. Contrary to belief.”

John’s throat tightens, burns.

“Where’re you going?”

“Hills, marra. Where I come from.”

“Will I …”

John stops.

_Inman, what sort of name is that?_

_Your lover over there has a name so odd, no-one else has it._

“It’s true I can call the dead,” Inman whispers, “remember that.”

John shifts in the cold bed, remembers.

“Shall I say goodbye to Yet, then?"

John's fingers creep out, touch the crow's transparent neck, the mica-shine of the feathers there.

There's a caw that sounds like laughter, though it can't be.

 Inman's smile is almost, not quite, alive.

"You canna say goodbye to Yet, John. Doesn't make sense. And sure I won't be the last to tell you that."

A whistle of wings and a faint smell of bird and earth.

John's eyes are open.

The morning light is reverse-vanishing through the sheers, and he is alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Wensleydale sheep](http://gwenythglynn.com/)   
> [Wensleydales](http://wensleydale.sheepforsale.info/)   
> [Yet more Yet](http://www.arkive.org/hooded-crow/corvus-cornix)


	5. Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whole stories have happened here, with and without him, with them.

The door cracks.

John is not alone.

The door cracks. Steps. Sheddings. A tempered bang.

He’s not alone. It’s half  twelve and he’s on the sofa, blanket bunched up, with his laptop, a glass, phone on the table with a text that reads, must,

_Nothing on today. Rest up. Gone for CuSO4 and honey._

And Sherlock is bending over him, blinking in what might very well be concern.

“John?”

There’s a great thud in his ribcage, then a flapping away.

“You’re dead,” John says, pushes back the blanket.

“You’re dead and you …Yet was here.”

Cough. Try again.

“Inman was here again, and …”

His hands land on Sherlock’s forearms, don’t go through.

“You’re not dead.”

“No,” Sherlock’s voice sounds strange, “not dead.”

He’s set a jar of honey and a bag down on the table. Light slices through amber, sets to shading the sack.  Wind outside bangs the panes; traffic sounds, rough calls, an alarm.

“I…” John blinks and there’s the flat, the skull and the skull, the case and the bow, broken-spined book there, pushpins, empty glass, shell casing, edge of laptop, torch, phone, the light familiar, woken to so many times, too many for a night, or a day, for days, years. Whole stories have happened here, with and without him, with them.

Sherlock’s fingers, calloused, stained faintly, rest heavy and peat-cold on his face.

“All right,” Sherlock says, “not good. Probably oughtn’t to have left you alone.”

John moves to sit up, thinks better of it, watches Sherlock slip into the kitchen muttering, “‘flu, must be; there’s always something.”

“I’m a doctor,” John calls after him, “I can …”

_Talk to ghosts. See the past. The future. The hell._

There’s a blur of tea, leaves and not feathers. Something cold. Something warm. He’s pulled up, pushed back with some care.

“How did you get this, John?” Sherlock holding his arm, turning it in the light, eyeing a bruise. (“Door frame or table edge,” Sherlock’s saying, “table edge, must be.”)

Must be, must be, _must be._  

He falls, drifts, relief; London in relief, heaps here and there of stolen things returned.

*****

When he’s awake, later, the light’s tipping and tilting onto the floor and Sherlock’s sitting again in his chair across, book trapped in still fingers, watching him.

His posture changes when John moves. Cock of the head. Clearer now.

“How do you feel?” Sherlock says.

_Sprung. Older. Haunted. Strange._

“Dreamt, I guess,” he says, swallows, “talked to your ghosts, I …”

_Saw the North Country come to London while your shepherd counted sheep and called his crow and said he could call the dead, but he wouldn’t call you._

_Molly sees the battlefield; you don’t know._

_There were sheep. Wensleydales with good legs._

_Whisky._

_Yet stole my passport._

_And Mycroft’s umbrella._

_I went out in pyjamas._

_With a crow._

_And a ghost._

_Who knows the names of all the beloveds._

_And dinna want to be solved._

“Yes, so I’ve heard,” Sherlock says, moves to sit on the sofa’s edge. Something quirked tender about his mouth, like a bud not sure to bloom. “Have this.”

John swallows something, pills, water, damned if he cares what because the wind is pecking at the pane and the sun’s bright and Sherlock is _here._

“You really haven’t got anything on now, have you?”

Sherlock stiffens, leans in solid and real.

“Not today,” he says, looks over his shoulder, “clearing out there.”

“You’d tell me wouldn’t you? You wouldn’t go off on your own, not…”

It’s difficult, the hoarseness, the being awake.

“I…”

_You wouldn’t die. You couldn’t choose to. You wouldn’t._

Sherlock settles, hip flush to John’s, bends so close their faces are almost touching. John can feel the weight in his pockets, see the buttons pull, one shoulder of the suit jacket coming off over a slope of silk.

_London is a gill, a fell, a crow-haunted wilderness dotted with black sheep. A wild full of ghost-calling, amorous ghosts._

He must have noticed that before.

“Sherlock.”

“I won’t,” Sherlock says at last, “go off.”

The weight of it. John coughs, shifts. There’s a piece of paper crinkling in his pocket, a cut on his thumb like a fine seam. The memory of a hop, a twitch and a tug.

(“Up, up, _up_ ,” says Yet the hooded crow.) He tries.

“No need,” Sherlock says, “rest.” His hands are steady on John’s shoulders, a thumb hooked lightly under the clavicle. His eyes, shadows under, very bright.

“Tell me,” John says.

“I won’t go off without you,” Sherlock says, “all right?”

“Tell me,” John says.

“I won’t.”

_I’ll tell you a story shall I?_

It’s been a long time.

John closes his eyes.

Sherlock’s breath is warm on his face, a bridge of mist there, just there, between open and closed, between what they’ve lost and what they’re yet to have.

John closes his eyes.

Sees the smiling, inscrutable face of Inman St. George.

Hears the voice of his crow calling wait, _wait._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [It's alright, alright to see a ghost](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcMY-dgnwkI)   
> [Yet](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB8cat9hDC0)   
> [Yet](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1h_Ym5XVj0)   
> [Yet](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5IwYUXF040)


End file.
